Energy has been increasingly consumed in various industrial production processes all over the world. The industrial energy consumption has already become a key problem of restricting economic and social development in many countries/regions. One of the foundations for the energy saving target is the assessment of the energy consumption or efficiency of enterprises. Such assessment is usually made on the basis of energy consumption units (ECUs). As used in the context of this disclosure, an ECU refers to a device, equipment, an infrastructure and/or a stage in the production process that consumes energy such as coal, water, electricity, gas, or the like. For instance, the ECUs in the glass production process include, but are not limited to, raw material mixing, melting furnace, glass forming, annealing, packing, and the like.
The accuracy of energy consumption assessment is affected by many factors. For example, different enterprises or organizations often adopt different production processes even for the same product. Moreover, for each ECU, there are usually many factors that have influence on the ECU's energy consumption. For example, different ratios of sulfur in the coal fines fed into the mills will cause different energy consumption. As a result, it is infeasible to apply a single procedure to different production processes to obtain accurate assessment of the energy consumption or efficiency.